Elizabeth Yang goes by The Deal Fixer. Companies call Better With Company when deals feel like they should be moving and are not, and her work sits in an unusual place: half sales process and strategy, half whatever is going on inside the person trying to sell.

She did not plan any of it. She had a comfortable consulting career until a stranger messaged her on LinkedIn, described a business that was stuck, and asked how much she charged. "I was like, I don't know. I guess I got to figure that out. I guess I got to start a business."

We get into moving from Fresno to Minnesota at twelve and becoming a linguistic chameleon, why hearing the Hmong language feels like home, the mortgage broker whose hands shook every time he picked up an application, the $50,000 price of being nice, and why you cannot turn Walmart shoppers into Nordstrom shoppers no matter how much you care about them.

My guest for Episode 5 is Mitch Bliven, founder of Genius Network Solutions, though this conversation is far more about the man than the company.

Mitch grew up wanting to be a short order cook or a stand up comedian. He went to college for business, felt completely out of place, and switched to social work, then left that to become a police officer, and left that too. By 24 he had two careers behind him and, by his own telling, felt pretty lost. Construction taught him a trade. Spreadsheets taught him he loved solving problems. And a pattern of burning out roughly every 18 months finally led him to a 10-minute assessment that, as he puts it, gave him ten years of understanding of his burnout in one sitting.

That assessment was the Working Genius, and it became the foundation of his work. Mitch now describes himself, only half joking, as a "corporate social worker," helping people and teams understand where they find joy and where they find pain, and build work around it. We get into a lot: why "where do you find joy in work" is a question almost no one gets asked, the difference between wanting and needing something, why connection beats every other source of happiness, and what it actually feels like to start a business.

In this episode:

• The line cook, the comedian, the cop, and the social worker: how a winding path led to his real work
• The 10-minute assessment that explained a decade of burnout
• Why "where do you find joy in work" is a question we almost never ask
• Wanting versus needing, and giving yourself permission to want what you want
• Why connection, not the Porsche, is what we are actually chasing
• Being kind to your younger self, and trusting that the dots connect looking backward

Learn more about Mitch's work at leadwithgns.com.

East Side Enterprise is hosted by Sam McKinney and produced locally by McKinney Creative Ventures. Know a business owner whose story should be told? Reach out and tell me who I should talk to next.

Gary Borglund wears a lot of hats. Through his nonprofit Generous Harvest he sources fresh produce and eggs from local and Amish farmers and gets them to food shelves in rural food deserts that rarely see anything fresh. Through Land and Egg Solutions he helps cities and small towns assess and revitalize aging buildings, like the old Burlington Northern railroad station in Taylor's Falls, and navigate the grant world that funds the work.

We talk about the reality of food insecurity, why small-town downtowns need an anchor to survive, the value of doing the assessment before you open a can of worms, handshake deals with Amish farmers, and why Gary chooses not to draw a salary from Generous Harvest. His closing advice comes back to Hudson's Be Kind project: give people the time to be heard.

Henry Schneider founded Open Window Productions, a video marketing agency in Oakdale, and co-owns Hangtime Board Shop, a skate shop in North St. Paul, with his partner Adam Bonin. A MCAD film grad, he got his start at Fox 9 before being poached by Channel 5, then built his own company.

We talk about learning through expensive mistakes, why a great video is about how it makes you feel and not the gear, and when authentic and unpolished beats corporate and slick, a lesson the skate community taught him fast. We also get into handling Google reviews, using AI to buy back time, and the honest challenge of balancing a growing business with a family.

Tim Voit is one of the most well-networked people in the East Metro and St. Croix Valley. He runs and facilitates a slate of networking groups (Networking With a Purpose, Center for B2B, Slice of Woodbury, a fractionals group) and is a Woodbury Chamber ambassador, all while building his LegalShield practice, where he has never missed a bonus and has ranked top ten in the country.

Tim left corporate ten years ago and had to relearn who he was. In this conversation he unpacks the Go-Giver philosophy that drives everything he does, why nobody should try to grow a business alone, how he gets people through fear to clarity, the rise of the fractional workforce after the pandemic, and the hardest Midwest lesson of all: being open to receive. He is also a contributing author, and the only man of twenty, in the bestseller What the Frak.

For the very first episode of East Side Enterprise, I sit down with Steve Grohn, owner of AJ Alberts Plumbing and Water Conditioning in Woodbury, for a wide-ranging, honest conversation that turned out to be far more about the man than the pipes.

Steve's path was anything but straight. He grew up with dairy-farm roots and a father whose relentless work ethic, a D-minus high school student who later graduated college with a 4.0 in three years, shaped how Steve approaches everything. From there it was a winding career: managing at UPS, selling at Gateway Computers, a run through the dot-com era, sales and marketing leadership at a heating and air company, a decade at a plumbing outfit, and a stint in commercial mechanical. Eventually he bought his way into ownership, first a waterproofing and radon company, then AJ Alberts, after Jim Alberts called him out of the blue.

We talk about the culture he protects at AJ Alberts (why he cuts anyone who is not a fit, and why repeat and referral business is the only path he trusts), his very natural take on consultative, educational selling, and the problem-solving obsession that really drives him. He riffs on Simon Sinek's "start with why," the British cycling team's one-percent marginal-gains philosophy, and hunting the small efficiencies that compound like a treasure hunt.

It gets personal, too. Steve reflects on recently losing his mother, on watching a friend face ALS with grace, and on the advice he would give any new business owner: there is no substitute for hard work, but you have to be working on the right things, and you have to surround yourself with people who add energy rather than drain it. We close on an unexpected note, a recent hot air balloon ride with a local pilot, and the surprisingly charming reason every balloonist still carries champagne.

In this episode:

• Dairy farms, UPS, Gateway, and the dot-coms: the winding road to owning AJ Alberts
• Buying the business, and the culture of care Steve refuses to compromise
• Selling by educating, not pushing (the restaurant-server approach)
• Getting one percent better: Simon Sinek, marginal gains, and problem-solving as a treasure hunt
• Grief, perspective, and the best advice for a new entrepreneur
• Water quality in Woodbury, free water testing, and PFAS

Learn more or get free water testing at ajalberts.com.

East Side Enterprise is hosted by Sam McKinney and produced locally by McKinney Creative Ventures. Know a business owner whose story should be told? Reach out and tell me who I should talk to next.